What in Me Is Dark
by Arkeisios
Summary: She didn't realize that something was very, very wrong until she met him. He had the brightest smile, the sunniest hair, the bluest eyes. It was uncanny. She found that he looked vaguely familiar, like she had seen him in her past life. But that couldn't be true, because she was in an entirely different time period. A different place. A different world. (SI/OC fic)
1. 0 prologue

**prologue. how it ends and how it begins**

* * *

A simple child,  
That lightly drew its breath,  
And feels life in every limb:  
What should it know of death?

William Wordsworth

* * *

 _And for that one moment, all she knew was pain._

 _Pain—it filled her senses, invaded her thoughts, became her living, breathing world: the raw feeling of pure, unmarred agony dancing on her skin was unlike no other torture she could behold. She was burning, slowly staining the air the horrible odor of charred flesh._

 _Her body was alight with fire, vibrant reds and loud, screaming oranges and yellows all coming together in a dangerous harmony that begged for her attention. It was beautiful, she thought almost absentmindedly, as if she herself wasn't wasting away slowly in the night. She wouldn't have ever romanticized death in her life, but as it was her own death in question, she felt she could sin this one time._

 _And as the sirens of the too-late fire engines blared, as the blasting jets of cool water brought down the inferno, as the house crumbled down to ashes, even as the last of the pain faded away, and her vision slowly going black, her mouth contorted to a mockery of a smile—_

 _Death was beautiful._

* * *

She died in a fire. Twenty-three, at the pinnacleof her youth, only nineteen days before her birthday. It was a fatal accident with the propane burner-evidently something had gone wrong in the middle of the night, and she died.

One life gone from the big, wide world; very somber, formal funeral that only her neighbors attended, if only to keep up appearances. Not a soul shed a tear for her loss. She didn't really interact with anyone in their small, well-to-do suburb community. All anyone knew about her was that she moved in from the city and that she was making a living for herself, away from an apparently well-off family. The rest were mere rumors, unreliable and flimsy.

It wasn't a burial. She had expressed her wishes to be cremated before in her will, a strange thing to have in your twenties. Ironic, given the circumstances of her death; they didn't have to burn much of her body. Half of it was ashes already. She had little to go with her name, only the mortgaged house and her few possessions.

They were all liquidated to gold and given to a mysterious friend from college that she had wanted to thank for "all the things she had done for her." The friend's name was not mentioned; she had wished to remain anonymous, only serving to further raise suspicions and incite whispers and murmurs behind closed doors.

How peculiar, the neighbors would say to each other. How problematic.

Her parents didn't attend her funeral.

* * *

Her last thought was concerning the beauty of death. Her first, however, was concerning the brightness of the lights and her eyesight: or rather, her hapless lack of said sight.

Her second thought was, what exactly was she doing here, living?

Here she was, a dead human being, all of a sudden as alive again as a newborn baby. She then belatedly came to the realization that she was, in fact, a newborn baby, straight from the womb, and apparently her blurry eyesight was actually miraculously developed; unheard of for a child that was just born. Well. That complicated things.

There were looming faces above her- one a stoic, relatively handsome male (handsome in the sense of strength and caring and compassion and gruffness that, combined, was admittedly really hot but she got the vague, innate feeling that it was wrong to think of him that way) and another a weary but still smiling attractive female, with all the love of a mother to her child.

She could only say that they were her parents, then. And as far as she remembered, her father was not hot and her mother never smiled.

There was talking, loud words and excited blathering, and then a hushed silence as her apparent DNA gifter spoke. She couldn't understand a word they were saying, however, as it seemed to be in a different language that she, for the life of her, could not place. It wasn't English. It wasn't even vaguely European. In fact, it seemed almost… Asian.

But it didn't have the harshness of Korean nor the fast-paced dialogue of Vietnamese. It definitely was not Chinese, as she had taken more than a few Mandarin classes back in high school to be able to recognize the language.

Japanese, then, because she was pretty sure Taiwanese wasn't a thing. It could be some other, minor language hidden away in the depths of the continent. Didn't sound like it, though, and it was evidently Japanese—she could define the lone word or two that even she knew from watching anime before her parents had banned it, saying it was a reprehensible, uncivilized and barbaric custom to watch "cartoons" when she was prepubescent. She had rather liked them.

But, in this life, she was apparently reincarnated into a Japanese family. Noticing that the doctors did not look very… doctorly, in the modern sense of white lab coats and stethoscopes and clipboards (well, they had the white coats down but not much else), there was a niggling notion that had started to uproot her mind.

Was she back in time, then? Not too far, though, as they had electricity and some rudimentary technology. Was that even possible, to die and then be reincarnated in a family before her time? And to ride the proverbial train of thought farther down its tracks, was it even possible to be reincarnated? Or was this what death was, an illusion meant to torment her senses with the falsity of having a life once more? She couldn't even tell right from wrong anymore, much less reality from fantasy.

So deeply engrossed her her thinking, she didn't factor in the silence that had settled in the room. It wasn't until someone's callused hand brushed her babyish face that she noticed something was wrong. They were all looking at her expectantly, she realized. Waiting for her reaction.

Hmm. She might as well please them and make a good first impression if they're going to be her family and all. (She absolutely forgot that this wasn't a job interview or interrogation or test—she was supposed to be a baby, and a newly born one at that. Not a fully cognizant adult testing to see if she was sane or not.)

So she smiled, her cheeks dimpling and eyes crinkling in joy. Her laughter (false) rang out through the room, filling the silence and spreading an almost palpable delight to the adults, and she could hear an audible sigh of relief, their worries of something not going right left unfounded. The talking and meaningless chatter started up once more, the doctors and medics going about doing their respective jobs and duties, cleaning up and generally looking busy.

Her parents, however, did not move away, instead choosing to stay where they were, apparently content in their peaceful watching of each and every one of her movements. Creepy. In her world her parents didn't even pay attention to her, deeming her a waste of space. This new, loving action more than vaguely bewildered her; she didn't understand what they were trying to do.

Was it another test? She stared solemnly back at them in a feeble attempt to analyze their every move, catalog them and cross-reference it with what she already knew (which she noted was not a very good example, as she hadn't really had a normal upbringing herself). They made the first move, her evident mother reaching out for her and before she can react, she is caught in this new mother's arms, and she cannot escape. Panicking slightly, she struggles in vain, trapped with this stranger smiling down at her, almost—cradling her?

Yes, she was being rocked to and fro, and with her weak hearing she could make out a faint lullaby in words she did not know nor recognize, but the tune soothing all the same. And even if it is strange and unknown and not familiar, she finds herself growing drowsy, her eyelids becoming heavier and heavier with each beat and her tiny chest rises and falls steadily, in beat with the song that is being sung for her exclusively.

And with a hush and with the end of the sweet, soft crooning of her new mother, she falls asleep.

* * *

so um this is really old. like, really old. but I figured it'd be a waste to let this just sit in my Drive forever to collect metaphorical dust I'm limiting the chapters to around 1500 words because I'd burn myself out if I wanted to routinely update this. maybe later I'll go back and republish this the way it should be published - if I ever finish it. haha I'm so funny. me, finish something? ? ? bye for now


	2. 1 we dream what we know

**chapter i. we dream what we know**

* * *

Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis.  
Unless you believe, you will not understand.

Isaiah 9:7, The Holy Bible

* * *

She didn't realize that something was very, very wrong until she met him.

With his bright golden spiky hair (if she was feeling at all the least poetic, she could've described it as finely spun gold or rays of the sun itself woven into the fragile fibers of human hair), he was definitely not forgettable. She was fascinated with his hair; did he gel it or what? It seemed that everyone she had seen had gravity-defying hair.

Looking closer (as close as she could get with her as-of-yet still underdeveloped eyes), there was shock of blue on his face—and looking even closer, the shock of blue was his eyes. What an odd color, she mused, entranced by their vividness. It was unearthly to have that strong of a color as one's irises, an almost sapphire aquamarine.

It was unrealistic. It was uncanny. It was unsettling... And with that thought, she found that he looked vaguely familiar, like she had seen him in her past life. But that couldn't be true, because she was in an entirely different time period, in an entirely different place. She was stranger here, in this strange land, so there should be no one she recognizes in this delusional life. Right?

It was probably her desire to have something known in this world, something tangible and assuredly real to prove that the entire this was not just a figment of her imagination, to think that she knew someone like this in a place like this place.

They were only passing by each other on the cobbled streets, but as her parents walked by, they both bowed low, and murmured, with utter reverence and respect, "Yondaime-sama." And judging by her parent's reactions, this guy is someone important. What kind of name was Yondaime? What a mouthful.

He smiled easily, his already sunny features lighting up even more, if it was possible. He was wearing a white sleeveless coat with red flames emblazoned on the hem over a forest green flak jacket, and she felt a recurring sense of déjà vu.

"Takeda-san… child…? …name…?" She couldn't catch much of what he was saying, only barely enough to decipher the meaning of his words. He was inquiring about her, she figured that much out, and they were on somewhat friendly terms—though her parents were perfectly respectful and deferent. Yeah, definitely someone important.

"Takeda Ichiro… yes… thank you… Konoha… thank you." She didn't know what this any of these words actually meant; they apparently concerned her and platitudes. It was all kinds of confusing, this 'new language' thing. Actually, everything about her very existence was confusing, but she didn't really want to go down that path just right now. That was less of a train of thought and more of a train wreck.

"…nice seeing… goodbye…." The exchange, brief and obviously of no real noteworthiness, was over, and she could almost remember where she recognized him from.

It wasn't until they were back at their reasonably large house meant for four that she remembers. Yondaime. The Fourth Hokage. Konoha.

Something was very, very wrong, and apparently she was in the world of Naruto.

(Which was both literally and figuratively impossible. Right?)

* * *

She didn't know her name, and she figured that she should probably learn it sometime soon. Names were important. But how could she when the only Japanese words she knew were things she could only faintly remember from watching what little episodes of anime she could find (never mind the fact that she was in an anime, no, that could be thought upon later and examined thoroughly late at night and when she was feeling decidedly less panicked).

It was a sunny day, bright and the sky was blue as the Yondaime's eyes and the birds were chirping and everything seemed perfect. But there were no clouds to watch, no trees to climb, no birds to follow around and there was nothing to do in her room.

She was still a baby, after all, and it would be more than slightly disturbing to her parents if she was running around chasing animals, to put it generously. No, because since she was technically barely five months old (at it was a mind-numbingly dull five months at that), she obviously couldn't be doing things that a baby couldn't do.

It irked her, to be honest, because there was so many things she could be doing with the time she would spend as a toddler that she couldn't. And being some sort of genius-prodigy would be no fun, either (it wasn't in her last life and it will definitely not be in this world of death and war and prodigal ninja-babies set out to have a mentally broken psyche by the age of twenty). So it was in the crib she would stay, acting perfectly content and woefully ignorant.

Her mother came in the room not too long after, all smiles and loving, doting care. She was swept up into her mother's arms and carried to the living room, which was relatively Spartan compared to that of her past life. Frankly put, the entire house didn't look very much like it had been lived in. There was no messes, no little chips or dents, no personal touches save for the few pictures on the wall, and none of the little signs that, when added all together, meant that someone had lived there.

But she would take what she could get, and this new family was much better than the last. So she disregarded all the little warning signs that told her not to get attached, because for once in her life, she felt like she was more than just a careless mistake made in a heat of blistering want.

When she was observing the room with wide eyes, her mother started talking to her in Japanese. She couldn't understand a thing she was saying, but even still, she turned her head to face her mother and listen.

"…Takeda Ichiro…." There it was again. Those unfamiliar two words, repeated again. It had to be of some importance; there was no other logical explanation. So, if it was only mentioned in her presence, and always mentioned at least once when she was there, it had to have some sort of connection to her.

"…name… Ichiro!" Namae. Name. Ichiro. What did that mean; was Ichiro her name? Was it her mother's or father's? Or was she talking about something else entirely?

Hesitantly she worked her babyish, undefined vocal cords, trying to sound out the syllables to ask. Not that she could—to her eternal frustration she still did not know the basics of Japanese, despite having being surrounded by it for little more than a month now (it was June now, summer and the weather was sweltering and downright scorching).

"I-ichi?"

It was all she could manage, the word sounding decidedly not foreign on her tongue, as if she was a native Japanese citizen. But it still was not supposed to happen; she being a mere five months old—at that age babies did not even have their sight. It wasn't plausible. A prodigy, a gift that she did not want. An anomaly.

The answering smile she had gotten in return was brilliant, likened to that of a morning sun rising over a darkened valley, shedding light over all below. Or, you know, not. She never really liked metaphors and analogies, anyways.

Her mother had started excitedly blathering on in Japanese, and in the middle of her chatter and ecstatic joy, evidently her mother had called her father, as he had come in the room looking more than a bit confused. "She… first… her name!" It was definitely frustrating, not being able to understand less than half the things her mother was saying.

But going from what was said, apparently what she had said was her name. Takeda Ichiro. That was her new identity in this world, and God forbid her from ever going back. Because now she had a family, loving parents and a place in the world. Everything was fine; in fact, all was well with her life. You could even say things were looking great.

* * *

so like I just realized I have no idea what I want Ichiro to do from here. I have a pretty good idea, sure, but I've decided to totally abandon that scrap-heap of a plot that I concocted like three years ago


	3. 2 daydreams at twilight

**chapter ii. daydreams at twilight**

* * *

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

* * *

She knew she shouldn't have said anything too soon.

She was technically seven months old the time everything bad happened, but five months was only 210 days, and 210 days was too little time to spend with her beloved parents, not to mention the fact that she wasn't even old enough to talk to them in an actual conversation, much less get to know them.

She had never thought Fate to be so cruel.

Unkind, yes, she was not so much an idealistic fool to think that the world could be healed and hate could be eradicated. But not so malicious and petty to take away her second chance after it had tantalized her with the hopes of a family, and not so devastatingly horrible to utterly ruin any chances of them coming back. It seemed she was wrong; the entirety of her existence was surely some superficial game the deities enjoyed while cackling manically.

And so Ichiro hated October 10th with a passion.

She despised, she loathed, she reviled, she detested, she abhorred the day. When she first felt that malevolent presence, so utterly dark and evil that she couldn't breathe out of sheer fear; she was paralyzed. A foreboding shiver crawled down her back, ominous and threatening, and she cried for the first time in that life.

No one noticed.

Her parents, clad in that forest-green flak jacket the Yondaime Hokage had worn, had rushed out of the house at first sign of distress, the scream of anguish and agony resounding throughout the air.

Someone died then, and her mother, with worry-filled eyes and a hard resolve glinting through, kissed her forehead and whispered a quiet, "I love you, Ichiro, never forget that. Be brave."

She did not understand the meaning, she could not—she wasn't fluent in the language yet. But years later, she would remember and understand and cry. And a tear fell from her mother's fearful eyes, dropping down on Ichiro's face, the salty water trickling down her cheeks, even as her mother (she never even knew her name) ran out of the room at her father's shout.

But she had paused at the doorway, for the briefest moment in time, and Ichiro could hear her choked whisper that carried through the air. "Don't forget."

And that would be the last time Ichiro had seen her mother and her father—her much beloved parents that she had only known for a little over a year—ever again.

* * *

The aftermath of the attack, however vague it was in her memory, was chaos. The pungent odor of death stained the air, invading the senses until all one knew was death. In Konoha, death was not beautiful.

It was a whirlwind of suffering and sobbing and desperation and heartbreak and agony and fear. The Fourth Hokage, in all his brilliance and strength and hope and love, was dead. Gone, with only a blonde, bright-eyed baby left in his place. The Kyuubi was gone. But Konohakagure was broken.

It was as if when the Yondaime died, Konoha died, and all there was left was a hollow echo of raw grief and sorrow and tears. The Yondaime was Konoha's innocence, however stained with death and detachment he was, he was the mark of an age now long passed. It seemed hopeless without him; he was the heart and the blood and the bones of the village—the support and they had all been steadily leaning more and more on him, and now they collapsed with his absence. Everywhere one looked there was destruction, the ruins of the glorious Hidden Village.

Ichiro cried by herself, that night, choked sobs breaking the heavy, nightmares becoming her waking dreams and the shudders she felt at the mere thought of the events that had transpired chilled her to the core. In her mind she screamed at the unfairness of it all, her eyes slowly closing shut and she fell into an uneasy sleep, plagued with dreams of blood and death.

The sky was awash with crimson red red red red (the color of the Nine-Tails, her mind sings) in the dawning morning after, as if the gods, too, were bleeding with Konoha.

For yet another time in her long, long life, Ichiro was alone in the dark.

* * *

Her red-rimmed, glassy eyes refused to open. It seemed that they, too, did not want to face the bleak reality of this world. But, as all bad things had to be approached, she slowly, wearily, lifted her eyes and met another's.

A brief flash of panic, and then, forcing her tensed muscles to relax, she sighed slightly. She was in the arms of an unknown stranger, apparently a ninja, Chunin, if the lack of a Jounin vest spoke the truth. Ichiro could feel the (warm, surprisingly comforting) arms around her tighten, as if to reassure her and bring her to ease. It worked, and, knowing that, at least for now, she was in safer hands, Ichiro closed her eyes and let the lull of the trip to somewhere in Konoha soothe her into a lackadaisical leisure.

When the relatively short trip was at its end, Ichiro found herself roused by the gentle shaking of her holder's arms. Blearily grumbling in the safety of her mind, she shifted from the niche she had made herself and yawned, knowing that she would be hard to resist from cuddling and adorably cute. It had worked on her mother, multiple times, of course, and—(here Ichiro cut off the train of thought, not wanting to go down that road of memories that were the last traces of her now out-of-reach family, and tried to blink away the tears).

Looking around, she saw, albeit blurrily, that they were in a rundown part of Konoha, the inky shadows looming even in the bright daylight. The old, almost withered brick building was definitely out of shape, and on the front of the doorway was a blackened wooden sign. Konoha Little Leaf Orphanage. A touching name, she was sure, but it contradicted the worn-out and utterly broken beyond repair Orphanage. There were workers there, trying to rebuild the damage done to it by the Kyuubi no Yoko, brick by brick. Floods of ninja came in to help, many with orphans in their arms. It was only more proof of the great death toll that there were so many children at the building.

She was abruptly dropped off at the decaying building, and the Chuunin who was carrying her had a brief conversation with a lady standing near the doorway, and, without ado, walked of (no doubt to bring more orphans to the Orphanage).

The Matron, before walking inside the doorway, spared a cold, disdainful glance at her, before clicking her tongue against her teeth in a sound that reverberated in Ichiro's head, and walked away. Ichiro decided that the Matron was not a kind lady, but nor was she all too cruel. She had seen a slight softening in Matron's eyes in that brief second she locked eyes with her, and Ichiro smiled.

This place was her new home; might get used to it sooner than later. (She determinedly did not think about how nice her old home was, how safe, how happy and joyful and how she was going to have parents, for once, because that old home was a thing of the past.)

And as Ichiro followed Matron into the Orphanage (crawling, of course, her motorary functions weren't that advanced), she looked over her shoulder, feeling that tensing of the muscles and the heavy boring of eyes into her back that signified that someone—or something—was watching her.

She immediately met the gaze of two very, very vivid blue eyes; eyes that she had seen once before on a vaguely familiar man some months ago. Looking up slightly, Ichiro saw a shock of glaringly bright yellow hair, and she smiled in reminiscence.

The baby smiled back.


	4. 3 the noble art of letting go

**chapter iv. the noble art of letting go**

* * *

Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to always and forever be explaining things to them.

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

* * *

It was a good day, Ichiro decided. A bright day.

A perfect day to be anywhere but here.

("Class, if you turn to Chapter Three, Section Two: How to Hone Your Mind as the Shinobi, on page eighty-one, we can start the lesson of the day," said the chunin instructor with lackluster.

"Hai, sensei," the class droned.)

But it was routine, inveterate, her honour-bound duty to be in this wretched place. She had, after all, been the one to want to attend (she didn't know it would be this… this agonizing, Ichiro wailed in a corner of her mind), and so attend she shall.

Ichiro wasn't the one paying for it, anyways.

But yes, the Academy was a wretched place. A miserable hellhole. Cruel and unusual torture under the guise of learning. If the civvies knew what went on in here…

("A shinobi must must abide by specific rules when out in the field. Ninja follow this code in order to "kill their emotions," preventing them from running wild and causing the mission to be a failure.")

Well.

They wouldn't care. Because, really, all the Academy did was teach. And all the students had to do was learn. But Ichiro didn't like their uniformed, factory-made, processed and censored "learning". A veritable knowledge vomit practice, really, and only tedious for those who already knew what they preached.

("The most important thing for a shinobi is to be a tool for achieving their village and country's goals. Emotions are considered unnecessary things."

The class went on in the background of Ichiro's mind.)

It was an exercise in futility for Ichiro, who knew it already. The Clan heirs did, too. Ichiro was more than pretty sure that she shouldn't have known what she did: after all, reincarnation isn't something pitifully common.

It wasn't like she knew everything from her supposed 'past life' either. As she grew older, the memories grew stronger. Ichiro was always advanced compared to her peers, but she didn't know if it was natural talent, or remnants from of previous incarnation. She didn't even know if she was a fluke, a mistake in the system, because apparently reincarnation wasn't a thing back where she came from. (Big whoop.)

She didn't even know if it all was a lie, something her mind had conjured up in her darkest moments to belie the fear and shock of losing her parents. It was highly possible; human memory was not infallible, and she knew that for a fact.

("When choosing between one's life, and the mission, the mission must always come first."

A fly buzzed near Ichiro's face. She twitched.)

But she couldn't help but remember a life long past, a world so radically different, a city so unlike Konoha she must be delusional to even begin to think of the inventions it held in its depths. Ichiro never knew before that she had such a vivid imagination, she thought dryly. But if it wasn't her imagination, then what could it be? Moving metal boxes that transported humans with only the placid manipulation of a few controls? Hunks of metal that doubtlessly weighed more than Ichiro could even imagine, yet still flew in the sky? Some sort of metal automatic weapon that fired shells at unimaginable speeds, and killed a man with the large clap of an explosion? Literal weapons of mass destruction that could wipe out entire cities off the map?

It was all well and good that Ichiro had a creative mind, but sometimes she wondered if she was a bit off in the head for coming up with such bloodthirsty things. Then Ichiro remembered that she is going to be a shinobi, and the shinobi profession was prone to such bloodlust.

Well, she wasn't going to be a shinobi—at least, not technically. Shinobi were men, kunoichi were women. The main difference was that shinobi were generally more power-based, and kunoichi were more agility/dexterity-based, and had kunoichi arts—seduction, flower-arranging, such and such kinds of womanly arts—to contend with. So Ichiro was going to be a kunoichi, not a shinobi. She didn't really see the need to come up with an entirely new word for this gender difference, but as Ichiro did not invent the Japanese language, the Japanese language did not work in her favor—that is, sensibly.

("In a hypothetical situation, your team is ambushed by Iwa nin along the border. In one hand, you hold the mission's fate - the scroll the Hokage needs to end the war. In the other, your teammate's lives," the instructor reads off an example from his textbook, expecting the class to answer once he is finished.

Ichiro's mind blares a warning. She disregards the eerie sense of familiarity for a trifle.)

Speaking of the Japanese language, did Ichiro ever talk about how goddamn hard it is to learn three different ways of writing something? Why was the stupid language so stupid—who needs three alphabets when you can just have one, easy, simple alphabet? Ichiro missed English. She did not miss kanji or katakana or hiragana, because she hated them! Why would someone ever need a way to write just foreign words, just regular words, and just more regular words? Trying to remember four thousand plus words was aggravating, frustrating, and exasperating! Kanji was stupid, and it took the longest time for Ichiro to even begin to be the least bit literate!

Oh, hiragana, you say? Try learning hiragana first? No! Ichiro refused to even remember more words than she needed to! Thanks, but she'd skip right on to kanji and be literate before the peons who need to learn hiragana for more than the basics.

This was a bad decision. Ichiro made a bad decision.

(He continues, "If you are to send the Hokage the scroll, that necessitates using your teammates as decoys in order for you to flee. For your teammates, this means certain death.

"As a good shinobi, what do you choose?")

It took the better part of a year to even be capable of fluent speech, and the majority of two years to be anywhere close to literate. By majority, Ichiro means that she snuck books from the Civilian library and hid them under her covers at the Orphanage to read at night and at day and at night again, because Ichiro was desperate to read and desperate to understand. This was why Ichiro had no tolerance for any such perceived "waste of time" in her early years—time that could easily be used to study—and thus ingrained the tenacity of brutal efficiency in her brain, hardwired and so complete that one could say it defined a part of her being.

This frantic, frenzied studying was also why Ichiro was bored, and previously had decided that it was a good day to be anywhere but here. A side-effect of her manic reading of basically any and all books available to young children in her access (which was undoubtedly a lot, as Ichiro was a master at looking just pitiful enough to evoke sympathy and kindness from anyone she turns her whimpering stare of Colossal Doom upon) was that Ichiro knew the majority of the theory that the Academy was teaching, and would only begin to truly learn when her class moved on the the physical side of their education. That would not be for another couple of months, as they were just beginning to learn what chakra was.

This meant that Ichiro had nothing to do—that Ichiro was wasting time—that Ichiro was bored.

(Somewhere in her peripheral vision, Ichiro notes a multitude of hands shooting up in the air. Her classmates are all eager to answer, willing to put their opinion aside for the sake of a good participation grade in class.

Ichiro remembers desperately vying for points.)

This, as her Academy teacher soon found out, was a bad thing. The bedraggled Chunin began to equate Ichiro with the devil incarnate, until he met Naruto. Then he began contemplating quitting his job whilst crying and splashed with glitter and paint and stinking of week-old tuna fish.

As the Naruto-world wasn't really her world (it was her second world, to be precise), and as Ichiro had no lasting emotional ties to the Naruto-world like she did her previous world, Ichiro felt emotionally free.

She had no obligation to save the world. Who was going to say that this wasn't just a delusion, a gift from the afterlife to let her re-enact an anime? She didn't have to care about her future - she was free from any burgeoning conscience telling her to not prank the teacher, that it was bad, that it was potentially incriminating upon your future success as a human being, and she could do whatever the hell she wanted to do without any negative moralistic repercussions. The world was Ichiro's goddamn oyster.

Well, she did realize that if she went too far, then she would be punished. Ichiro was extrinsically motivated, of course, and did want the pleasure of being rewarded from time to time. She figured punishment would definitely inhibit any future pleasure derived from materialism.

(A boy's prepubescent voice answered, "The mission, of course!"

The chunin instructor seemed to give his assent, and asked why the mission.)

Ichiro slumped her head in her arms to further ponder her current train of thought. To prank, or to not prank?

("The Hokage needs the information to end the war! My teammates would die honorably.")

Considering this, Ichiro decided upon a course of action, weighing the consequences and the alternatives. She was more than pretty sure that if she decided to carry out a full-fledged pranking war, then she would be, at the worst, expelled from the Academy. And Ichiro always planned for the worst; this meant that this was not a viable choice.

If she was expelled from the Academy, then she would no longer receive the orphan's fund from the farce of a government in Konoha. At this point in time, Ichiro survived upon the fund. She had no other way of income, being only seven years old. No sane store would even think about hiring on a seven year-old, despite how competent she may or may not have been.

With outright and blatant pranking crossed off list of possibilities, Ichiro began to consider the other options.

(A voice piped up from the front - Haruno, Ichiro's mind supplied. "Um, sensei—if this were a hypothetical situation. What if you could save your teammates by staying in the fight? Theoretically, you could win the fight and give the Hokage the information, right? Sensei?"

"Wrong. The mission comes first."

"But—"

"The mission comes first.")

Psychological warfare was just as effective as pranking, she supposed. And sometimes twice as fun.

("Class is over! Haruno, come see me during lunch.")

She'd have to start out subtle.


End file.
